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Re: Dishonored Preview Thread

Originally Posted by BoldMushroom

Not very excited for this. I enjoy System Shock 3 Bioshock and Deus Ex and Thief and Assassin's Creed, and this is liberally cribbing notes from those games, but it doesn't seem to have its own identity. It's spreading itself too thin. There are some cool powers, but it sounds like I'm using them to do the same things I've done in other games.

For a counter-example, look at Portal. Valve could have taken the Portal mechanic and thrown it into any old first-person shooter. Instead, they made portals the star. Everything in the game revolves around using the portals. They're not just a means to an end, they're the crux of the gameplay. As a result, it felt really fresh and exciting.

By contrast, Dishonored's Possession and Blink are cool powers, but they're just a means to a familiar end, which is sneaking around and killing dudes (or not, if that's your fancy). And since catering to stealthy and confrontational play styles is part of the core design, I don't expect to see any power implemented with the ingenuity or creativity of Portal.

Level design is going to make or break this game, I think. I like the example of locking the target in the steam room and sneaking to the pipes to turn up the heat. If the game throws in enough variety and flexibility like that, I might give it a whirl.

I know wherre you're coming from but nowadays a lot of games are copying elements from other good games and they are still successful.

Re: Dishonored Preview Thread

I'm sure it'll be critically and commercially successful. I'm sure if I was forced to play it, I'd play it to completion, admire its craft, enjoy parts of it. But I'm a bit tired of games that I simply admire or enjoy. I want games that try something really new and memorable to enamor the player, and Dishonored feels too safe to do that. It's very familiar, and most games today feel that way.

Four years ago, I probably would've loved it, but now my tastes are a bit too picky.

Re: Dishonored Preview Thread

I like Dishonored so far but I found a few things disturbing.

1: You can't have general and/or dialog subtitles. Whoops. I found it under audio. (wtf though, audio?!)
2: The annoying black bars when you have a conversation.
3: The outdated graphics (they can do way better than this. It's probably due to the outdated Unreal engine)
4: The autosave doesn't seem to work.
5: When you die you have to start the ENTIRE MISSION over again. That SUCKS.

Re: Dishonored Preview Thread

Originally Posted by Amber

3: The outdated graphics (they can do way better than this. It's probably due to the outdated Unreal engine)

The low detail textures is a stylistic choice, rather than an engine limitation. Though in a way it does allow the hilariously outdated hardware on consoles to catch up a bit with modern PC hardware, so I guess it's sort of a way to get around a hardware limitation.

Borderlands 2 has a similar thing going, but they use a filter to make it even more cartoon-y.

At any rate, it doesn't look outdated, as no old games look like this. This game has high polygon count, yet low texture detail (but for the most part decent texture resolution). Old games will skimp a lot harder on poly count than textures.